Polabian Slavs

The approximate territory stretched from the Baltic Sea in the north, the Saale[1] and the Limes Saxoniae[2] in the west, the Ore Mountains and the Western Sudetes in the south, and medieval Poland in the east.

The Polabian Slavs, largely conquered by Saxons and Danes from the 9th century onwards, were included and gradually assimilated within the Holy Roman Empire.

The tribes became gradually Germanized and assimilated in the following centuries; the Sorbs are the only descendants of the Polabian Slavs to have retained their identity and culture.

The Bavarian Geographer, an anonymous medieval document compiled in Regensburg in 830, contains a list of the tribes in Central Europe to the east of the Elbe.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia classifies the Polabian Slavs in three main tribes, the Obotrites, the Veleti, and the Lusatian Sorbs.

Other tribes associated with the confederation include the Linones (Linonen) near Lenzen, the Travnjane near the Trave, and the Drevani in the Hanoverian Wendland and the northern Altmark.

[5] The Veleti, also known as the Liutizians or Wilzians, included the Kessinians (Kessiner, Chyzzini) along the lower Warnow and Rostock; the Circipani (Zirzipanen) between the Recknitz, Trebel, and Peene Rivers; the Tollenser east and south of the Peene along the Tollense River; and the Redarier south and east of the Tollensesee on the upper Havel.

[7] Joachim Herrmann considered that the core Sorbian tribes surely were Colodici, Siusler and Glomaci, and that they also settled and influenced around Magdeburg, Havelland, Thuringia and northeast Bavaria.

[9][10] According to radiocarbon dating, the first Slavs reached Southwestern Hungary, Suchohrad in Western Slovakia and Prague in Czechia in the first-third of the 6th century, and Regensburg of Northeast Bavaria in 568.

[10] However, palynology and other evidence show that the land in Germany became forested and not well resettled by the Slavs, with most material and sites dating since the 8th century.

[13] Some Slavs advanced across the Elbe into Saxon territory, but retreated when the Christian Duke of Poland, Mieszko I, attacked them from the east.

Beginning in the late 1150s, King Valdemar the Great of Denmark enlisted the aid of Duke Henry the Lion of Saxony against the Slavs; their cooperation led to the death of the Obotrite prince, Niklot, in 1160.

The 1164 Obotrite revolt led by Niklot's son Pribislav convinced Henry the Lion that keeping the Slavs as allies would be less troublesome.

Alarmed at the expansion of Henry the Lion's power, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa deposed the Saxon duke and redistributed his lands in 1180/81.

Pribislav, a Christian prince of the Hevelli, bequeathed his lands to the Saxon Albert the Bear upon his death, thereby leading to the establishment of the Margraviate of Brandenburg.

In a series of bloody wars between 929 and 963 their lands were conquered by King Henry the Fowler and his son Otto the Great and were incorporated into the Kingdom of Germany.

However, the Sorbs, the descendants of the Milceni and the Lusici, have retained their identity within Lusatia, a region divided between the German states of Brandenburg and Saxony.

[17] With the exception of Arkona on Rügen, few Polabian towns on the Baltic coast were built near the shore, out of concern for pirates and raiders.

While not highly populated compared to Flanders or Italy, the Polabian towns were relatively large for the Baltic region, such as in comparison to those of Scandinavia.

[15] The majority of Polabian Slavs were peasants in small villages who engaged in agriculture[18] (rich in grains, flax) and animal husbandry (poultry, cattle).

Farmland was divided into a unit called a kuritz (Latin: uncus), for which peasants paid grain taxes to the voivot.

Much of their territory was dotted with holy places in nature to which the Slavs could pray and make offerings to Slavic gods.